Striving to live as simply as possible so that we can enjoy the sacred blessings of every single day.

xx

Monday, February 24, 2014

Going once...going twice...

In the late spring of 2013, Brian and I sat down and
penciled out some numbers. With our
family being the size it had grown to be, we needed something with a little
more space. But that meant figuring out
how much we could afford. And more
importantly, how much we felt we SHOULD spend.
Sometimes those numbers can be quite different.

One topic of discussion was how much we would get from
the sale of our current house. I wrote
down a number that we both agreed would be fine and we went from there. We researched mortgage rates and did some
general figuring of what we would be looking at financially.

I kept the piece of paper with our notes on it – tucked
it away in a house-planning folder – completely forgetting it was even there.

We took the leap and decided to build. And of course that meant we needed to sell
our house. The trick would be to list it
at just the right time – where we had plenty of time to sell it without
stress. But also so that we could live in
it until our new house was finished.
This was a delicate situation.

We chose our realtor – a man who goes to our church and
has been a good friend to our family - and talked with him at length about our
desire to not move twice. We agreed that
once 2014 arrived, we would talk again about putting our house on the market.

At the beginning of January, we had our realtor over, he
stuck a sign in our yard, and we signed some papers. We had some traffic and I began the
exhausting process of trying to keep a house somewhat show-ready while three
small (sometimes messy) children still lived here.

I quickly learned how to do quick clean ups and we made a
lot of trips to the library while realtors showed our house.

Then nothing. No
traffic. No showings. Quiet for two weeks.

We decided to quietly lower our list price to see if we
could get some more interest. And boy
did we. Within days we had multiple
showings. I remember cleaning the house
for the first of those showings and thinking, “I just have this feeling…”

I asked my Coffee Break group to pray. It was wearing on me a bit – the whole
process – and I asked them if they would just pray that the timing would all
work out well. They prayed for me that Wednesday
morning, all bowed heads around a table with their Bibles in front of them.

On Thursday we had two showings. We took the kids to the Fun Factory and to
the library that night. We didn’t hear a
lot of feedback, just that things went well, and I thought maybe I had gotten
that “feeling” a little wrong. Maybe it
had been just wishful thinking.

Friday morning, our realtor calls and says he has an
offer in his hands. I was stunned. He told me the number and said there was room
to negotiate. So we slept on it and in
the morning he came over and we made our counter offer. A lot of numbers went back and forth on
Saturday. We wrestled if we were making
the right moves. And after a lot of
phone calls, the final offer was extended.

Decision time had arrived. And when we weighed the information, I really
felt like God was saying “yes”. We
accepted. The papers were signed yet
that day and the deal was “done”.

I had so much peace about the decision. The timing is great and we will not have to
move twice. We have the assurance of
completing the construction of our home without the worry about selling our
current house. I don’t have to wrestle
three kids into the car at random weird times of the day whilst trying to clean
up behind them. Our house looks lived in
instead of show-ready. The decision has
been made and is no longer hanging over our heads.

Just after we had signed the final purchase agreement, I stumbled
across that sheet of figures we had drawn up so many months ago. I scanned over the page, my eyes falling on
that one number we had written down – the amount for which we hoped to sell our
home. It was, to the dollar, exactly
what we had just accepted.

What an affirmation!

So with a great weight off our minds, we move forward and
can now look to packing boxes and preparing to move into our new home. We are so thankful for those who prayed for
us as we walked through this new experience.
We are so thankful for our realtor who did a wonderful job and helped us
think through many decisions. We are so
thankful to our parents who have encouraged us and given advice along the
way. And most of all, we are so thankful
that God has granted us peace with our decision.

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About Me

I am 30-some years old and have been happily married to my Hubby, Brian, for 12 years. We have two little girls and one boy - Reagan, Maddie and Hunter. I am believer that my King, Jesus Christ, came to die so that I might live in service of The King.